BIBLIOPHILIC (UN)SAINTLINESS

Picture drawn from
http://www.cartoonstudio.co.uk/StressCartoons.html

Generally speaking, I love all the people who use the library. Generally speaking. But ever since Bill Bryson we know that this is “always a dangerous thing to do, generally speaking”. True enough, most library users are really nice people. Yet, there are also those that turn even angelic me into a raving termagant. In the past two years I’ve accumulated enough experience to be able to divide these weirdoes into the following groups:

                                                   

Group 1. The pseudo-intellectuals.

Group 2. The complicated.

Group 3. The know-it-alls.

The Decline of the Novel in the Unipark Library

Having worked in the university library for almost two years now, – first only for the English Department, now for the whole of the Unipark – I’ve noticed that I’m getting strange. I start remembering and paying attention to weird things. Things like the exact shelf marks for nice or even not-so-nice books. Things like the general inability of art history students to find shelf marks A-D in their section of the library. Things like the belief inherent in library users that merely because there are currently no baskets available they can just walk in with their bags.

The most recent trend is much more shocking, though. It’s a notion that’s been steadily creeping into my consciousness for a few months, a notion that I’d been fiercely rejecting because of its absurdness.